Favorite Visual Stories Of 2018

Members of the NPR Visuals team used their skills in photography, illustration, data visualizations and video to tell stories that reflect the world around us. The year was filled with political news as we tracked the 2018 midterm elections. We continued our coverage of Puerto Rico’s recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria significantly damaged the island in 2017. Photographers documented South American migrants who traveled in caravans in hopes of reaching the U.S.

We worked closely with the NPR investigations team on stories about a silent epidemic of sexual assault of people with intellectual disabilities and how the government has not intervened in continued health problems associated with coal mining. As part of the Above The Fray fellowship, we worked on stories in Papua New Guinea, which has one of the highest rates of intimate partner violence in the world. NPR’s international desk reported on the many facets of China’s influence around the globe in its series China Unbound.

Stories about everyday life in the U.S. kept us busy as we examined what it’s like in prison when working on a college degree or raising children. By partnering with Gene Demby on NPR’s Code Switch team, we explained the lasting history of housing segregation in the country. We dug into home price data 10 years after the Great Recession to see where housing affordability stands.

This year, we brought back The Picture Show, a platform that focuses on visual stories. Photographers shared their projects such as discovering new traditions during Eid al-Fitr, documenting a migrant caravan and covering a pageant that crowned Miss Navajo Nation.

There were plenty of stories that took us away from the busy news cycle, including a look at melodic drumming. We answered questions like how birds get oxygen inside their eggs before they hatch. We highlighted the joy of building kites in the Hakimpara Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. Here is a look back at a collection of memorable stories from the year.

Pauline is a woman with an intellectual disability. At a time when more women are speaking up about sexual assault — and naming the men who assault or harass them — Pauline also wants her story told.

Her story, NPR found in a yearlong investigation, is a common one for people with intellectual disabilities.

NPR obtained unpublished Justice Department data on sex crimes. The results show that people with intellectual disabilities — women and men — are the victims of sexual assaults at rates more than seven times those for people without disabilities.

It’s one of the highest rates of sexual assault of any group in America, and it’s hardly talked about at all.

Beauty — or Hózhó to the Diné, or Navajo, people — symbolizes living in harmony and balance with the Earth, the spirits in the plants and animals, with the sky and with one another. So it’s fitting that the Miss Navajo Nation pageant is a weeklong celebration of the Beauty Way in many aspects of a woman’s life.

Caravans of migrants have been organized for over a decade now. However, it wasn’t until 2014 that people came together and organized a migrant caravan from the border of Guatemala and Mexico to the U.S.-Mexico border. Besides allowing people to band together to migrate in a much safer way, these caravans are mostly driven by a common theme or goal, whether as assistance to those affected by the earthquakes in Oaxaca and Mexico City or in solidarity with those already traversing the country aboard freight trains in search of a new life in the U.S. or Mexico.

The 2018 caravan was joined in April of this year by Diversidad Sin Fronteras, Diversity Without Borders, the second trans-gay-migrant caravan, which celebrates inclusivity and diversity among migrants.

Ten years after the housing collapse during the Great Recession, a new and different housing crisis has emerged.

Back then, people were losing their homes as home values crashed and loans went underwater. Today, home values have rebounded, but people who want to buy a new home are often priced out of the market. There are too few homes and too many potential buyers.

Signs of change are visible inside North Korea. Once thought of as a Stalinist relic preserved in amber, with empty streets, cold gray buildings and an outdated airport, Pyongyang of today looks increasingly modern, as do a handful of other cities targeted for development. Conditions are worse in less favored areas — there are still shortages of food and electricity — but the country’s economy is improving despite sanctions, and, overall, quality of life has come a long way since the famine of the 1990s.

After the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history in Las Vegas last year, lawmakers discussed imposing restrictions on “bump stocks.” The Las Vegas shooter used that type of gun modification, which allows a semiautomatic weapon to fire like an automatic weapon, and killed 58 people.

After a gunman killed 26 people at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a month later in November 2017, lawmakers discussed how they could improve the background check system.

Just after the new year, residents of the small farming community of Johogave in Papua New Guinea had blamed a member of another clan for the deaths of three of their relatives. They claimed that the man — a coffee farmer and father of 10 — had used a form of sorcery known as “poison” to kill them.

In the Eastern Highlands, the accusation of sorcery is a vigilante’s rallying cry. Nationally, such accusations are believed to be responsible for dozens of deaths every year.

There’s no Xbox or PlayStation for most of the kids in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. But there are kites.

In the late afternoon, a steady wind blows over the hills of the Hakimpara refugee camp. Young boys race to a ridge at the top of the settlement to fly homemade kites. Some of the “kites” are little more than a plastic bag flapping on a string. But some are more sophisticated, with long tails and frilly tassels.

The busiest section of the U.S.-Mexico border is the Rio Grande Valley. It’s not unusual for Border Patrol agents to catch more than 500 immigrants a day trying to cross into the U.S. along this 55-mile stretch. In spite of increased border security and rising costs to cross, migrants are still determined to make the journey.

NPR spent time on both sides of the border during the summer, where immigration is part of everyday life.

China has spent much of the past 150 years regaining its place on the world stage. Its march to economic behemoth is well-known: a string of impressive breakthroughs, superlatives and the unprecedented creation of wealth that came along the way. China’s financial fortunes — especially in the past three decades — have led to greater political influence and diplomatic sway in almost every facet of international life.

Do you think that the private thoughts in your head could influence how other people — or creatures — act? The answer is “Of course not,” right? Because to say yes would be to admit you believe in mind control or telekinesis or some other phenomenon usually reserved for superhero comic books.

But early in his career, a research psychologist named Bob Rosenthal wasn’t so sure. So to test his hypothesis, he designed a devious experiment.

One late night in the spring of 1984, a group of sauced drag queens leaving Pyramid Club in Manhattan came up with an idea: a Woodstock for drag performers.

Flash-forward a year: The first official Wigstock was born in Tompkins Square Park. Over the next 16 years, the performers kept coming and crowds kept swelling, sometimes into the tens of thousands.

Eventually, a combination of inclement weather and trouble getting permits nixed the outdoor festival for good around the turn of the millennium.

But over Labor Day weekend, after a 17-year hiatus and a massive rise of drag in pop culture, Wigstock returned — reborn on a rooftop venue in the city’s Seaport District, with a massive sound system and partners like Tony Award-winning actor Neil Patrick Harris and his husband, David Burtka.

But more granular than congressional districts overall are the counties that compose them. We mapped the percentage of House ballots cast for the party that received the most votes in each suburban county, and we looked at how that compared with 2016.

Families, students, teachers and activists descended upon Washington, D.C., having come in droves by car and plane and bus. They chanted, shouted and, in some cases, cried until their voices were hoarse calling for stricter gun regulations.

As students delivered speech after speech, making emotional appeals for action, their supporters listened with rapt attention.

NPR photographed and spoke with some of the people who attended the “March For Our Lives,” carrying the emotional weight of the day.

On a summer evening, a soft breeze rustles quietly through the trees. The hum of cicadas fills the air. Bumblebees buzz through flower gardens. Grasshoppers bounce while crickets chirp from the lush grass.

Summertime brings all of nature’s musically inclined creatures out to play a symphony every day — and for centuries, insects have been an inspiration in music. Here are six bug-based compositions from throughout music history, from classical composers writing entire insect symphonies to metal bands channeling the attitude of fire ants.

Angel Benavides, a lanky teenager, dribbles down the basketball court of his school gym in Manvel, N.D. It looks like he’s going for a layup, but when he realizes he’s unguarded, he stops in his tracks and takes a 3-pointer. It’s a nice arching shot, but the ball bounces tenuously on the rim and doesn’t go in.

It’s late June and Angel is already thinking about playing for his high school basketball team in Texas, 1,700 miles away. But he doesn’t know whether he’ll get there in time for November tryouts.

That’s because Angel’s parents are farmworkers. In the early 1990s, before Angel was born, his family started migrating from Texas to North Dakota, where there was work harvesting potatoes, corn, beans and beets.

That flexibility is a big deal for employers who rely on seasonal workers to quickly harvest and process crops before they spoil. But it puts workers’ kids — more than 300,000 of them nationwide, according to the Department of Education — in a tough situation: keeping their grades up in a system designed for students who start and finish the year at the same school.

Your body needs oxygen to function — and that was true even before you were born. As you grew inside your mother’s womb, even before you had working lungs, your cells were crying out for oxygen. And your mother kindly answered that call. Oxygen and nutrients from her blood made their way down your umbilical cord, through your belly button, and fueled your body.

Now consider a chick — before it has hatched. It’s cut off from its mother by a hard shell and a couple of membranes. There’s no way for the hen to get her still-developing offspring the oxygen it desperately needs; the pre-hatchling is on its own.

Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor, about a one-hour drive from Seattle, is one of at least eight prisons in the country that allows a small number of women who are pregnant and give birth while incarcerated to keep their newborns with them for a limited time.

Supportive officials say that because women make up the fastest-growing segment of the country’s prison population, prison nurseries provide a way for mothers serving time to nurture and maintain a strong bond with their children.

When photographer and photo editor Eslah Attar moved to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2017, she spent Eid al-Fitr alone for the first time. Suddenly, all the things that made Eid special to her were no longer there: the anticipation of staying up late, deciding what to wear and where to eat, and spending the day with family and friends. Her new friends encouraged her to attend Eid at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., so she put on her nicest clothes and grabbed a camera.

The mid-20th century was a bad time to be an apple lover. The produce section of supermarkets only had a few apples, and one stood tall above the rest: Mealy, and tough-skinned, it was the Red Delicious.

Back in those days, apples were a commodity, and the race to provide apples at the lowest price suppressed prices for all apple growers and discouraged apple innovation. A few things helped change that world for the better — and chief among them was the discovery of the Honeycrisp.

This is the story of that miracle apple and the innovation that made the business of better apples sustainable — all while hastening the downfall of the Red Delicious.

What would you say if I told you that drums can sing? The best jazz drummers have always understood this as fact. Allison Miller has even made it a core part of her artistic mission — as drummer, a composer and a bandleader, notably with her ensemble Boom Tic Boom.

Jazz Night in America recently caught up with Miller, who skillfully demonstrates the concept of “melodic drumming” — using her drums and cymbals, a Duke Ellington tune and a new piece of technology — in our video short.

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